"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
Upon the unborn, as a Devicer
Wed as a lock upon a door
In abolition
In the faltering of guided intent
Oh, what am I to be, as such, in this transmutation?
Anchored of admiration
Limited of disposition
You, tireless despot, fabricate my prison
(All they want is) to shepherd forth the grandest kind
To bring about divide, inferno
Of our attributes we acquiesce to comprehend these binding forces
For I smell a fragrance between your attainments
As though it snakes through the skin of your vessel
Now, of grandeur's essence, you feel my mark
Universal, perched on the alcove, in the heart of your mind's eye
I am insurrection; my origin is crossed, undone
From the lyre that made the first sound
So to do you feel the mark of the hand that plucked it
You are stripped of your shame
(Impotence) I am a frigid frame
Impotence; I am a cast of a frigid
Guided by the folley of intrinsic weakness
Shelled within the maw of the fire
Delivered of the tether holding my essence
I remain transfixed
Inculcating ambition; reciprocating bounded souls
Weathering the plight of disaster
The contagion that fills us finds rest in the culling of my will
One last unwritten longing to feel not the sun though it burns
Wed as a lock upon a door
In abolition
In the faltering of guided intent
Oh, what am I to be, as such, in this transmutation?
Anchored of admiration
Limited of disposition
You, tireless despot, fabricate my prison
(All they want is) to shepherd forth the grandest kind
To bring about divide, inferno
Of our attributes we acquiesce to comprehend these binding forces
For I smell a fragrance between your attainments
As though it snakes through the skin of your vessel
Now, of grandeur's essence, you feel my mark
Universal, perched on the alcove, in the heart of your mind's eye
I am insurrection; my origin is crossed, undone
From the lyre that made the first sound
So to do you feel the mark of the hand that plucked it
You are stripped of your shame
(Impotence) I am a frigid frame
Impotence; I am a cast of a frigid
Guided by the folley of intrinsic weakness
Shelled within the maw of the fire
Delivered of the tether holding my essence
I remain transfixed
Inculcating ambition; reciprocating bounded souls
Weathering the plight of disaster
The contagion that fills us finds rest in the culling of my will
One last unwritten longing to feel not the sun though it burns
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Fast Car
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